Comments by "jeppen" (@jesan733) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1.  @adurpandya2742  it's often hard for an intelligent man to predict stupid actions. They just seem so implausible.
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  2. The Chinese are building 5-ish reactors per year, which is actually a bit slow and won't get them to French levels of nuclear penetration anytime soon. But they are building and researching very broadly, so they are getting ahead technology-wise. They build, research and improve SMR, district heating reactors, pebble bed, thorium reactors, conventional LWR and much much more. The US can't compete because of ridiculous bureacracy. So "if-if-if" the future is nuclear, it'll likely be using Chinese models. This may give them quite a bit of geostrategic and commercial leverage.
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  3. Just like police, courts and various other authorities. Yet we seem to need them.
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  4. The cost of environmental regulation should be borne by the consumer. There is nobody else, really, since economic activity is done on the behalf of consumers and he pays for it all in the end.
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  5. Disinfo campaigns do pose threats. E.g. lots of people were injured and some died due to Trump's disinfo campaign concerning the 2020 election.
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  6. Ok Ivan. Go listen to Ritter then.
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  7. Same with police, so no police?
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  8. About 25% of new cars in Europe are plug-ins, roughly 50% in Sweden (the latter with no EV subsidies but fairly high fuel taxes). I think Peter vastly overstates the difficulties in ev penetration and understates the environmental advantages. The momentum is huge, but of course now with the wars and high inflation and interest rates, investments are being postponed.
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  9.  @druharper  what else can you say? In September 2013, the Venezuelan government took over a toilet paper factory to "avoid scarcity" while blaming business owners and traders. That was 10 years ago and it has only got worse since.
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  10. ​ @AWAVAVA  Yes, 100 kWh goes 300 miles. And then that's 110 kWh before charging losses. And that's 275 kWh thermal energy in a thermal power plant at 40% efficiency. And 275 kWh is equivalent to 8.3 gallons of gasoline. So 300/8.3 = 36 mpg. And that's not better than highway Toyota Corolla mpg. Thus you have roughly the same fuel energy use in ICE and EV. I love EVs, but fact is they don't save energy, they only give flexibility to choose other energy sources.
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  11.  @davidpnewton  Chernobyl put 400 times more radioactive material into the Earth's atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I don't think Russia will do it, but I think that if they do, they'd take weather patterns into consideration and make sure the wind goes toward the west. Its use would make NATO intervene regardless of plume direction.
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  12.  @cemasikoglu9597 I absolutely want to escalate. Ukraine needs more and better equipment and ammo, and they need to be set free to use them on Russian soil.
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  13. ​ @HempAdvocate89 Tulsi is clearly a conspiracy theorist. That has got nothing to do with what anybody says, except what Tulsi herself says. It's just a fact.
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  14.  @DebugMaster1234  the EU including EU countries have contributed about 2x more than the US to Ukraine. It's just the case that the majority of the weapons have come from the US and the majority of financial support has come from the EU bloc. But the EU is a far larger contributor in total aid. It's our home turf and we do take the bulk of responsibility, but you have the military muscle. You're missing that the current security architecture has been designed by the US. You wanted Germany and Japan to be militarily weak. You wanted no nuclear weapons proliferation. You wanted these alliances where you are at the center. You wanted to be the global hegemon, the sole superpower. You wanted us to rely on your weapons industry. So we buy your arms, we let you lead, we support the dollar economy and support most of what you do with what we can in our weakened state. Now you have a populist bunch that complains about the security architecture that you set up and wanted. And yeah, of course it's fine if you want to take 20 years to implement a plan for a new global security order. But it's not reasonable for you to take these random populist complaints as reason to abandon your commitments cold turkey and let Ukraine (and later the Baltics and so on) be swallowed by Russia and in general let the world descend into chaos.
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  15. No, truth isn't relative.
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  16. Saying you're a captive of Rssian prpaganda without saying you're a captive of Rssian prpaganda.
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  17. Disagree. They wouldn't fire them off in panic, they'd wait for the right weather patterns to make sure the fallout go toward Ukrainian positions and cities.
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  18. Lots of manufacturing in the west still. Sure, China is the biggest player with almost a third of global manufacturing, but German manufacturing alone is 3x that of Russa, and US manufacturing is 9x that of Russia.
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  19.  @MarkMcAllister-ni9sf  so you magadonians don't know what you're voting for. What else is new?
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  20. Oh, if we just had an abundant, scalable fossil-fuel free 24/7 energy source, like if we could place pieces of metal next to each other in water and it'd heat up and generate steam. That'd be something!
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  21.  @DeerUNIT42  he has opinions of Trump and his cabinet picks. Is that hard for you to deal with? You know, the election is over, you can relax and stop being a cheerleader for irresponsible and authoritarian governance.
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  22.  @Ray-uf6uc  what's the difference between "civil war" and "regime change"? Also, afaik, the regime hasn't changed.
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  23. Like "monopoly on violence".
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  24.  @AD-mo5sg  it's a bit funny considering islam supposedly bans intoxication.
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  25. Norway's crude production is flattish, though.
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  26.  @hard2getitrightagain314  the elections are honest.
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  27. "Vote. Let us vote. He wins he wins, he gets a L, he gets a L. It's that easy." This has already happened. He wins he wins. He loses, he claims to have won and tell his minions to "fight like h-ll". Then they start to build gallows.
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  28. South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and even Thailand face very, very similar issues despite no one-child policy. A slew of European countries are also going there. And e.g. Iran.
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  29.  @lookoutforchris  your attempt at debunking my argument falls completely flat. Worst Dunning-Kruger I've seen today. It's exactly my point that we've had police and courts for ages, and they're abused and abusive, yet we need them. And it's clearly "actual history". Thus OPs rhetorical "can never be abused" is not a valid argument. Anything can be abused. We need to strike the best balance we can.
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  30. There's little to no benefit in energy efficiency for EVs. If you do fuel-to-wheel efficiency calculations for ICE vehicles and BEVs starting from a thermal power source, you'll end up on roughly the same energy use per mile.
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  31. This isn't hard to understand, if the US supports enough, Ukraine wins. If not, they're dependent on Europe ramping up support and military production fast enough, which is not clear, but probably this also is doable but at a far larger cost of fallen Ukrainian heroes.
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  32.  @Thai-Tanic.  "How do you feel about Elon just slashing the retail prices by 20% (again)." This is great, shows how fast battery prices are coming down. "And therefore trashing the re-sale value for the Tesla's owners, that bought before the price reduction?" I feel the same horror as for the drops in prices and increases in performance of flatscreen TVs.
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  33. This is not Peter's expertise. Thorium is an answer if we want it to be. It's proliferation-safe, not because it's completely impossible to make weapons within its fuel cycle, but because it's hard enough so that any would-be nuclear weapons state would stay clear and instead build a dedicated plutonium-producing uranium-based reactor on the side. It does solve the waste problem, as it uses all of the fuel and not just 3.5% (so the volumes are reduced to 1/20-th or less), and it can eat old waste. Also it is abundant enough for us to never run out of fuel. But otoh, ordinary reactor tech is good enough for the foreseeable future, and the current roadblock is overregulation and extreme safety requirements driving costs, which isn't really what thorium solves.
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  34.  @biblehistoryscience3530  "does" is present tense, and it does nothing. And it's more like $67b. And before jan 2022, it wasn't vast amounts. Specifically, Ukraine got no heavy weaponry at all before Russia's full-scale invasion. To my mind, the US is morally obliged to keep up the support and help Ukraine win. One reason among many is that it pursuaded Ukraine to give its nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for security assurances. Also, of course, it's in the US interest to do it, and it's very, very cheap. Anyone who thinks the $67b was a lot should have a look at the US run-rate for containing Russia and China through ordinary defense spending over the years.
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  35. Your analysis has some clear merits, but to my mind, new nuclear power was killed by a regulatory explosion while RE has been nurtured by various subsidies.
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  36. Why? It's fairly clear that Russia is very careful to not strike NATO territory or manned assets. They did attack a drone over the black sea, but even that they harassed rather than fired upon.
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  37. Those are all loons, except Rogan who laughed at Trump.
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  38.  @elektrotehnik94  "Cost-effective SMR's are always 10 or 20 years away" This is a misunderstanding of how it works. Low cost comes from series production and refinements of designs during series production. It doesn't come from a tech blueprint.
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  39.  @MA_KA_PA_TIE  I've read 1984. I don't think an emotive name, nor dystopian fiction, makes it clear that we don't need a specific institution. There's plenty of dystopian fiction about e.g. police too.
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  40. What if your leftist university studies (at best) hasn't given you an accurate representation of events? The Shah was already there, and keeping him in power was preserving the constitution of Iran. He was a progressive modernizer, giving women equal rights, did land reforms and much more.
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  41.  @rcircle2008  Biden didn't do an increase. The Fed regulates the money supply. The inflation spike was global because of necessary stimulus during covid (before Biden) and supply chains bottlenecks after covid, plus some Ukraine war effects.
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  42.  @jameshudson169  all reasonable people are nevertrumpers.
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  43. I think most will not unsubscribe and will be unperturbed by content being delayed for a week.
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  44. Please explain. E.g. there's a supermajority that wants to vote for the Ukraine support, but the republican speaker (a Trump puppet) is refusing to schedule a vote.
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  45.  @VioIetShift  not so sure. Range and ability to strike deep Russian asset concentrations may be more important. But both should be pursued.
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  46.  @heyho4770  In 2023, Chinese coal generation increased more (341 TWh) than their non-hydro RE (296 TWh). Nuclear increased just 17 TWh. But nuclear is rather long-lived and doesn't have the same limitations as VRE. What the Chinese endgame is remains to be seen. They still seem to be taking nuclear very seriously. Lots of research, lots of education, lots of workers being churned out.
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  47. I agree with you on the big picture. Factory-made SMRs like NuScale should be built close to cities, but of course politics gets in the way. (I disagree that nuclear is earthquake-vulnerable, and that it necessarily needs cooling water.) I'd add that yes, intermittent power works but needs lots of hydro or gas for balancing, or storage. Gas is cheap for now in significant areas of the world but it's a finite resource. So longer-term and at scale, solar and wind will need lots of storage. Perhaps that's doable. Otherwise nuclear or coal is needed.
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  48.  @AD-mo5sg  lots of khat use in Yemen and Saudi.
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  49. He's not a big left cheerleader though. He's always critical of Obama for doing nothing, for example. But anyone with at least some wisdom and maturity recognizes Trump is unfit for office, and I guess that's why he'll lose in a landslide and why Peter is critical of him.
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  50.  @AWAVAVA  it seems you're not really well. Your arguments in both the previous comment and this are unfocused and aggressive gish galloping. I stand by my comment: There are no significant energy savings with EVs.
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  51.  @stevegolden8720  Americans should be defending Europe because you've committed to do just that. We live in the security order that you designed. I don't think Trump will win, but we'll see.
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  52. Let's hear some examples of misinformation and outright lies.
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  53.  @TheMrCougarful  people said 20 years ago that nuclear is too slow, and people will say 20 years from now that nuclear is too slow. But it really isn't, it's almost arbitrarily fast, and there's no urgency it seems.
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  54. It's very clear that Trump has declined if you compare old and new speeches.
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  55.  @antman7673  problem is that if you can enrich to reactor grade, you can enrich to weapons grade. The energy requirements is mainly in the beginning when enrichment is very low. Going higher is cheap and quick in comparison.
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  56. Agree, but nuclear has been available for mass production in various sizes for 50 years. It's always politics and red tape that stand in the way.
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  57. France has been doing fairly well with close to replacement rate TFR, although it's been dropping worrisomely post pandemic.
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  58. The interview with Rogan was a disaster. Rogan even laughed at him when he couldn't answer simple questions.
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  59. I think she'll win though.
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  60.  @stevengrice1807  what's holding back RE is intermittence, right? Even if you kill all big baseload, the potential for non-stored RE is still pretty low.
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  61.  @jfilmsproductions7289  when Russia fails, as in Ukraine, they obviously make additional preparations and try again. We know this, so if Russia tries and fails sending nukes, how do we respond? We may only have minutes or hours in such a situation.
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  62.  @johnnyel  tinfoil hat on!
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  63. Could you give some examples of how she does that?
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  64. In foreign policy, that might not work too well, and now the MAGA crowd is essentially doing Putin's bidding.
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  65. What do you have against Harris? She seems very sharp and well merited.
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  66. Being anti-MAGA isn't being pro-democrat.
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  67. Inflation isn't the president's fault.
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  68.  @srwven  a few hundred kilos of battery will be valuable and recycled. So the minerals needed is basically a one-time cost for the switch to non-petro transport. I'm a fan of nuclear, but RE is a fairly good match to EVs since you can often charge the battery when electricity prices are low.
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  69.  @Ai-dz7ys  "£60,000 to own a top of the range Tesla Y." So what ICE car would you compare that with? A bottom of the range Toyota Corolla? "Oh and don't forget, the batteries are screwed after a much shorter time than a combustion engine" Why do you think so? I think the opposite is true.
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  70. "If you look at the history of reactor development they started "modular" and then when they got them working well the first thing everyone did was make them as big as they could because it makes the energy so much cheaper." Well, at least they thought so, and perhaps it worked for some time, but was it the right long-term choice? Large cores are harder to cool, and safety considerations have been driving costs. Large constructions also give less experience accumulation and series production. It also give longer construction times, which add to interest, and add financial risk, which also increase interest rates. The pain points today seem very much connected to the enormous sizes. But yeah, I agree the government should make sure we build a bunch of each of promising designs. Then they can compete.
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  71.  @ninefox344  of course I agree that big LWRs are safe enough, but the bureacracies do not. Sweden built in 4-5 years a pop 40 years ago. We need to get down to 4 years or less ideally, but we're up at 12 years or something like that. I think SMRs can help with that. It may be for the wrong reasons, but we need to do whatever works in the world of constraints that we're in.
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  72.  @michaeldavis3819  no, I think the major problem was actually the socialism, devoid of economic insight.
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  73. Ukraine did pretty well until the US stopped supporting. It will again do well if the US resumes support. NATO will expand as long as there are eligible countries that wants protection from Russia.
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  74.  @vknight7497  why is that unreasonable?
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  75.  @michaelbizon444  TDS simply makes sense.
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  76.  @DumbDempolicysayswhat  so you think the just-in-time aspect of Peter's commentary is crucial? When I look back at the recent vids, it doesn't seem so to me, just looking at the headlines. E.g. the national debt, the sinaloa cartel, immigration, the future of various countries and so forth. Of course, there's usually a reason why the topic is trending and why Peter addresses it, but still.
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  77.  @thomasv9258  what are you talking about? Harris is about 5x better than Trump at doing both.
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  78.  @madcatz3702  I think the DEI thing is backfiring as we speak. She has a strong merit list, and clearly intelligent, so not DEI hire. Most people know this and claiming otherwise just reinforces the perception of misogyny in GOP and in the GOP ticket.
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  79.  @ronbridges3933  tin foil hat on!
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  80. Dude, don't listen so much to Russian propaganda.
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  81.  @ethanwetzel7  that's just your cognitive dissonance speaking.
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  82.  @knpstrr  no, they don't use energy 4x more efficiently. It's roughly the same efficiencies from thermal energy to wheel for ICE and EVs.
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  83.  @knpstrr  why do you compare with 25 mpg? I remarked to another guy: "Yes, 100 kWh goes 300 miles. And then that's 110 kWh before charging losses. And that's 275 kWh thermal energy in a thermal power plant at 40% efficiency. And 275 kWh is equivalent to 8.3 gallons of gasoline. So 300/8.3 = 36 mpg. And that's not better than highway Toyota Corolla mpg"
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  84.  @knpstrr  no, I'm not making an argument for better grid power generation. I'm making an argument against attempts to portray EVs as more efficient. Electricity's higher energy quality has been known like forever, and you pay for the higher energy quality by corresponding losses in conversion to electricity. There is no primary energy win in using EVs. They are not more efficient in a well/mine to wheel perspective and that's what matters. However they do give flexibility in choice of power source, including not only coal but also nuclear/wind/solar/hydro and that matters, obviously.
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  85.  @knpstrr  I can't stop you from being disingenuous and refusing to acknowledge that EVs don't save energy.
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  86. It's just you who refuse to recognize the real conspiracy theorists, like Tulsi and RFK jr.
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  87.  @zee9709  no I didn't.
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  88. True, but that's also fissile and the excess nuclear weapons plutonium has been diluted into fuel for civilian reactors.
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  89. Did she? How?
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  90.  @hikashia.halfiah3582  "arbiter of truth" and "enforcer of order" are interchangeable in your arguments, so you didn't really motivate why one should be handled by an institution such as the police and one not. If you meant to do so?
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  91. What's really stupid is employing RFK Jr, Elon Musk and Tulsi Gabbard.
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  92. Unlike Trump, he's weird in a good way.
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  93. There are strong bipartisan majorities for lots of things, including support to Ukraine, but the current speaker of the House is a nobody that sits there at the pleasure of Trump, and Trump wants him to block things so he does.
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  94.  @think_ffs3934  it's definitely the case here. We've had "just 30 years of copper left" for 100 years now, while manifolding extraction.
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  95. No worries, they're going to go all in on nuclear to have abundant cheap clean energy. No wait, that was the alternate universe. My bad.
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  96.  @xhagast yeah, kindof. But there are socialists, like in Sweden, that don't do the most d-mb things in socialism because they understand some of the consequences it would have. Chavez didn't seem to have that filter and knowledge.
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  97. There could be multiple reasons for such unwillingness, but none are good.
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  98.  @richardtaylor6341  I would say that at best, those who opposes it don't understand the consequences. At worst, they don't care or even welcome the consequences.
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  99. If you don't see the cognitive decline and the lacking intellect in Trump's ramblings, then I'm sorry, but its Dunning-Kruger Deluxe.
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  100. Same with police and courts, could go very wrong if we create such institutions. Honestly, I think a "ministry of truth" is just one of these things we need and we have to find an institutional balance that works. The disinfo campaigns, foreign and domestic, it's doubtful we can survive them being unregulated. The mere fact that Trump is close to winning again is testament to that. And yeah, I know some media tend to overinterpret him a a bit and may see dog whistles that are or aren't there.
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  101.  @gov2260  it's not channel moderators doing it, it's youtube automoderation.
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  102. No, we don't, because that's not accurate description.
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  103. Mearsheimer is subtle, but Donbass Doug is just ridiculously pro-Russian. Max Blumenthal seems preoccupied with Palestine at this time, so I'm not sure he has the bandwidth to support Putin at the same time.
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  104.  @maxpower3990  it's not about minimum cost to the weaponry. The US would have to supply less if Ukraine had the freedom to use the weaponry more effectively.
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  105.  @Niko_Ly  Israel support is part of the current foreign aid bill that speaker Johnson is blocking.
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  106. It's not going to hurt significantly. The US debt to GDP ratio isn't that high. Even if the US borrows all the money required to finance the interest (500-1000 billion per year) but otherwise balances the budget, the debt to gdp ratio falls quickly.
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  107.  @TankEnMate  exactly. So something sounding "scary" doesn't mean we don't need the institution. I think we need to curb disinfo, so, in a sense, we need an arbiter of truth.
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  108. So how do you understand Tucker Carlson?
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  109. Trump calls his opponents "Birdbrain", "Ron DeSanctimonious" and "Sloppy Chris". Do you know which people he calls "Horseface" and "Evita"? What makes you want to vote for that behavior?
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  110. Being accidentally wrong is not really the problem. The problem is the conscious disinfo campaigns. Nothing points to irregulaties deciding the last four years.
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  111.  @Knightfall21  for me as a non-american, he's pretty obviously right at least in this vid.
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  112.  @AlphonseNouveau  so you're saying taxes on the poor can be balanced by the removal of taxes for the rich?
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  113.  @knpstrr  it's not fact, it's fact resistant. If you have a diesel or gasoline generator and plug the electricity into an EV, that EV will go about as far as an ICE using the same fuel. Is that really so hard to understand or acknowledge?
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  114.  @AWAVAVA  look, I bought my third EV in 2019, and I live in a country with $7/gallon gas and $0.1/kWh nighttime electricity. You can bet the farm that I'm aware that electricity is cheaper! But I'm also an engineer and have difficulties letting misperceptions about physics stand, and you seemed to perpetuate the myth that EVs actually save energy through higher efficiency. They don't, they just provide the flexibility to not use oil. That's all I'm saying.
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  115.  @Crumbsoftotailtariansim  the first one who mentions wef in a debate has revealed himself to be a conspiracy nut.
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  116. What actually happened? Russia made an angry gesture. So nothing.
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  117. Does any rational man?
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  118. Do you like Tucker Carlson? If so, why?
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  119.  @84Actionjack  Tulsi was recently a democrat, but then she saw limited opportunities and suddenly started taking on Republican stances, going on Fox, working with Tucker Carlson and trying to become Trump's VP pick. Doesn't give any confidence that anything she says is true. If you have something damning to say about Harris, say it yourself and provide some decent basis for it other than that a post-truther said it.
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  120.  @84Actionjack  I think you give Tulsi far too much credit for "ending her whole career", especially now that she's poised to become president. I remember seeing a clip of Tulsi making this attack, but I don't remember the particulars. I remember the impression I got, that the attack was pretty vague, unsubstantiated/unreasonable and gish-galloppy. And anyone who knows anything about debates know that it's often impossible to defend against a gish gallop attack. I don't feel a need to refute Gabbard's remarks. If someone tries to present actual evidence and not just random smears by a post-truther, I'll look into it and acknowledge or refute.
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  121.  @rkramer5629  yeah, I call this very common fallacy "Appeal to Capacity".
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  122. What is he wrong about then, in this segment?
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  123.  @darthkek1953  "the permanent veto is why the UN could not stop the illegal and genocidal US/UK attack on Iraq" It was merely illegal, not genocidal. The Russian war against Ukraine is genocidal, though.
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  124.  @MrToubrouk  I don't agree. I think Russia plans quite a bit and is actually quite careful even as it makes bad decisions that sometimes seem reckless. It takes time for Putin to make decisions, like e.g. mobilization, or blowing up that dam.
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  125.  @davidpnewton  measurable fallout spreads pretty much everywhere, but of course Ireland didn't get significant fallout from Chernobyl. A 45 kt weapon set on ground burst according to nukemap gives a fallout contour for 1 rads per hr: Maximum downwind fallout distance: 159 km. So that's not so much. OTOH, there will be panic regardless how little that reaches the west. We love nuclear panic.
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  126.  @paulatreides2509  is it the Russian allegience you like, or the conspiracy theories?
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  127. They're not very brittle or easily sabotaged constructions, so arguably the physical security requirements are moderate. Also many of them will be placed close to each other.
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  128. Check an interview with Trump from 8 years ago. It's night and day. The decline is apparent and continuing.
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  129.  @Dehmigaahd  Harris is in much better cognitive shape than Trump. Much better.
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  130. It's a 2 year supply plus on average slightly under a year's worth loaded in operational reactors. Military HEU designs have longer refueling intervals.
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  131.  @AngelEconomics  that was wrong, the internet is a viable source of information. However we have to stamp out the systematic disinfo efforts.
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  132.  @GotGracexxxxx  I know a lot about operation Ajax already, but thanks. Maybe you should go and read more broadly on the full context and what happened during the reign of the shah, and not just some one-sided account designed to say "western powers bad, mmmkay"?
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  133. There are people saying this for lots of tech, including nuclear: "Let's wait for a silver bullet." But scale really does help. It helps making the market bigger for alternatives, it helps gradual improvements, it helps reduce costs, it helps increase supply chain capacities and so forth. Also, fortunately, tax dollars aren't really needed for EVs anymore. They'll take market shares anyway until reaching 80%+ sales in the EU in the 2030-ies and the US in the 2040-ies.
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  134. I guess enough of the republican party was swept up in ru disinfo campaigns that JDV felt he had to pander to those voters?
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  135.  @pelinoregeryon6593  EV electricity needs are pretty minor compared to overall electricity consumption, so no, cost of electricity will not skyrocket.
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  136.  @glynnec2008  no, not worried about EV fires. Are you worried about having a full tank of gasoline in your garage? No? Why not?
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  137.  @dantech1  US plug-in sales in 2022 was 7.7%. China 29%, Germany 31% and Norway 88%. I don't think you understand the momentum and cost curves involved. Sure the US sales may still be dominated by ICE in 2035, but most of the world will have plug-in dominance.
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  138.  @patrickweaver1105  end of life costs are negligible in an LCOE calculation. The costs and delays in building the things are what matters. SMRs give other economies of scale. If the cost reduction from industrial learning effects is 20% per doubling of produced items, SMRs offer 2-3 additional doublings and could thus halve the cost that way.
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  139. Why do you think he was a walking war crime? He was a truly horrible human being, but not a war crime. Him being in poor health and dying from pneumonia after Russia had bombed so many health facilities and electricity power plants may be a result of Russian war crimes though. You're right about that.
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  140.  @Sebdes23  if you compare Trump now and Trump 2016, the cognitive decline is super obvious.
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  141.  @LTVoyager  "He is a leftist at heart." It's easy to confuse knowledge and education with leftism in the US.
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  142.  @Halbared  his cognitive ability isn't impressive. He seems to have difficulties with abstract ideas and is easily triggered.
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  143. I'm a Swede. We had a nuclear program, but we don't now, obviously. I don't think we have it in us to start going for a nuclear weapons program under almost any conceivable circumstances before a full-scale WW3. And even if we do go for it and let go of all regulatory hurdles, I really doubt a month is enough. Perhaps I'm wrong and it's much easier nowadays with 3D printing and whatnot, but just the plutonium manufacturing should take considerable time. I guess we can do it in our LWRs but I understand it's a rather inefficient process. Then we need to be able to deliver it to the Kremlin as well.
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  144.  @KevinLyda  Australia's is a bit different, I think its light vehicle fleet consumption is less than a third of its liquid hydrocarbon consumption, with e.g. lots of aviation, shipping, mining and heavy transport making up the rest.
    2
  145.  @antman7673  yes, it's both this multiplying effect and the kindof "pyramid" reduction in feed amount when enriching a fixed amount of feed. So if we start with 1 ton of natural U and get it up to reactor grade by enriching it 5x, then the feed to the next "multiplication" step is just ~200 kg, so you can get that feed from 4% to 20% for 1/5 of the energy cost of the first step, and then the last step to almost 100% is 1/25 of the first step. Thus when someone wants "breakout capacity", e.g. the ability to quickly create weapons grade uranium, enriching the reactor grade base feed is around 2/3 of the total work.
    2
  146.  @michaelmaroney1660  the US has managed the global inflation spike faster and better than other countries. Good jobs growth. How about that?
    2
  147. It will.
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  148. He says his vids will be released here for free still, just with a week's delay. So you don't need to unsubscribe if you're ok with that.
    2
  149.  @MrExplicitblack  no, he's not. It's an immature joke of putinists, and it might have been funny for a week or two, more than a year ago. Now it's just cringe.
    2
  150.  @leko4420  as I said, cringe.
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  151.  @calc1657  "yet we've given them 100s of billions of dollars in aid--far more than any other country" You actually haven't, yet. You promised to safeguard Ukraine's borders if Ukraine did your bidding and gave up its nuclear weapons.
    2
  152. You know what you should do? Follow someone who has had a long lucky streak in predictions, and as such is a virtual oracle. Then when his luck runs out, jump to the next one. There's always someone on a streak!
    2
  153.  @radiodare  well, I think all those observations are have merit, but wars ebb and flow. I think it'll continue to do that several more times before this is over.
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  154. Tucker of course want to keep up a facade. But he softballed Putin in the sense that he gave him many leading questions that he hoped would make Putin provide cause for a US/Western audience to distrust its own leadership more. Hilariously Putin was so badly prepared that he rarely took the cues.
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  155. Yeah, let's do that. I think you're already being proven wrong by momentum and polling, but let's see how it plays out.
    2
  156.  @thrace_bot1012  you're wrong. France is in particularly good shape because the decline has set in much later.
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  157.  @lachlanbell8390  thank you Ivan, good to know.
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  158. I understand that sentiment, but the government is now unable to respond to crises, so the southern border is left open and Ukrainian heroes are dying needlessly while the US' geopolitical standing is being shot to pieces, among other things.
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  159. The Ukrainian general staff reports 451730 casualties for Russia, but that's just what they've been able to observe. Not strange if the's 30% extra that Ukraine hasn't been able to see and report.
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  160.  @a.brekkan4965  yeah, I think so. The daily numbers ebb and flow in sync with what we know and what e.g. Oryx have been able to visually confirm. I have no reason to doubt them.
    2
  161. How was his take "lefty"?
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  162. Close your ears and eyes for as long as you can. Eventually it'll catch up to you what you've done.
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  163. Swede here. Erdogan has simply been haggling. Likely the primary sticking point has been the blocked sales of F16s from the US to Turkey. Turkey's foreign policy has long been based on not playing favorites much but instead using tough negotiations to leverage its geography and any other advantages it got. Perun has a good vid on Turkey from about 2 months back.
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  164. Perhaps, but not by this vid. It was quite good.
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  165.  @Zero95011  how would Russia know where Ukraine got info from? Could be collaborators on the ground pointing out targets. Ukraine is already doing strategic targeting with domestic drones.
    2
  166.  @sifu64  RFK Jr? Why not just as well appoint Lavrov as president?
    2
  167.  @HankSemoreButz  it's not the "hard" faction, it's the soft spineless puppet faction bowing to Trump and Putin.
    2
  168.  @tonywilson4713  well, nuclear is cheap and fast if we want it to be, but clearly there's no urgency so we keep nuclear on the backburner as an option for the future. The US essentially kicks the can down the road using fracked natgas with intermittent RE as fuel savers. Possibly China will lead the way eventually, but it doesn't seem to feel much urgency either.
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  169. South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and even Thailand face very, very similar issues despite no one-child policy. A slew of European countries are also going there. And e.g. Iran.
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  170. The NRC has afaik agreed that NuScale emergency planning zone doesn't need to extend further than the site fence. We can put them close if we want to. Also NuScale puts 4-12 reactor modules in the same building, so they've kindof solved putting many together already within the design.
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  171.  @RedShiftGalaxy  only 7 million fewer voted blue, and if they were of Dunharrow, 2 million of them avoke to vote for Trump in 2024. The voter turnout difference is normal.
    2
  172. ​ @estonianman  I'd also vote for Harris if I were American. She's normal and competent, while Trump is unfit for office in so many ways.
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  173.  @kevf  Russian restraints? By blowing up hydro dams and taking out all energy infrastructure they can while Ukraine isn't allowed to retaliate because Russia must not lose too fast?
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  174. In fact, it requires quite little energy/work to raise the enrichment level further. There is higher enrichment used in research/prototype reactors and medical reactors and military reactors (esp naval). Higher enrichment makes for higher burnup, longer fuel life and smaller reactors.
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  175.  @msimon6808  I don't think there's much evidence for such theories, and fracked wells deplete fairly quickly. It'll be interesting to see though how reserve additions keep up with demand in the decades ahead. World energy needs are increasing, and so is the need to balance increasing intermittent RE sources. Natgas use has increased globally 2% per annum, and in the US 4% per annum, the last 10 years.
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  176.  @FamilyManMoving  although the 86 years include almost 6 times more unproven resources than proven reserves, so it's an estimate that at least aims to include what we'll find in the future. And with a 2% annual increase in production, 86 years is cut down to 50 years. I agree, there's a lot of time and economically it probably makes sense to use natgas with RE fuel savers in the US for the foreseeable future.
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  177. Tucker isn't so weird. He's anti-establishment, and so is Russian propaganda. So Tucker uses Russian propaganda as a vehicle. That makes him a mouthpiece.
    2
  178. Wanting a president fit for office who could create sustainable solutions rather than just tearing stuff down on a whim isn't leaning much to the left.
    2
  179.  @guywithdacap4713  good that you draw the line 500 years ago, since the Mongol conquests were quite severe. Regarding US aggressiveness and lethality, I'd like to remind you that hospitals and doctors are really dangerous, and also police. Don't unnecessarily give them reason to intervene.
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  180. Funny thing is that virtually all first-time EV buyers say the same: "It's the best car I've ever owned." I've heard it from owners of Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model 3, Volkswagen ID.4, Polestar 2 and Kia EV6.
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  181.  @AWAVAVA  I gave you the calculations, so I have already proven my assertion on energy efficiency. You retorted with red herrings, like air pollution. The only substantive objection you had was that "Modern coal plants are closer to 60% efficient, not 40%.". That's simply not true, except perhaps some idealized slideware. Real-world coal plant fleets are rarely doing as well as 40% even.
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  182.  @knpstrr  yes 25 mpg is the average for the US fleet's behemots with oversized engines, including pickups, but why would you compare that to the performance of smaller Teslas? Toyota Corolla is the most sold car and does 33 mpg combined city/highway and 40 mpg highway. 319wh/mi is like 38 mpg if you factor in losses in thermal power plant and charging losses. So again, EVs don't present primary energy savings, they only present primary power source flexibility. That's the benefit!
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  183.  @knpstrr  repetition just makes it worse.
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  184.  @AWAVAVA  "What would the mpg of a Toyota Corolla be if you account for the energy lost to drilling/offshore pumping, crude oil transport, crude oil refinement, and gasoline transport." It would lose exactly as much as an EV powered by a gasoline or diesel generator. "You chose to throw out an apple to oranges example as a false comparison." No, quite the contrary. I'm making sure to do an apples to apples comparison. "I'm perfectly fine keeping the conversation confined to mpg" And again, the mpgs are very similar. If you don't acknowledge that, you apparently feel the need to subtly mislead because you don't think the actual advantages of EVs are sufficient. "the bottom line is that EVs are 66% cheaper to fuel per mile based on current gas price" Yes, because oil is that much more expensive than coal, nuclear, hydro and wind. Not because it saves energy. "But my statement about the negative externality of gas still stands." Yes, EVs are much cleaner for cities and lets us use other power sources than oil. Those are both very important advantages.
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  185. I think the optimal amount of solar on roofs in Europe is zero.
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  186.  @andrewc662  it doesn't reduce the load on the grid if it's not in areas of the world that has its peak load in the summer, and even then only the first 5% penetration or so.
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  187. Everybody benefitted from status quo. You've effed around and will find out.
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  188. Wasn't both Obama and Trump outsider candidates in a sense?
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  189.  @ChristopherFodor  why do you lolwhat? He beat Hillary in the primary.
    2
  190.  @marcsyrene3781  "And the fact that electric motors are 3 times more efficient than ice motors." Dude, you need to spend 3x the energy in thermal power plants to get the electricity. It evens out.
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  191.  @davocc2405  Germany shut down its last reactors this spring after a brief lifetime extension. So it's all being decommissioned now and Germany has officially exited the civilian nuclear power club. Fully agree on fashion and the influence of Putin. But sadly I don't think the Germans will return to nuclear power anytime soon, so it's fairly long-lived fashion.
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  192.  @DebugMaster1234  I can't find disbursed support figures right now. Germany is ramping up military spending and support to Ukraine quite rapidly. Basically Germany after WW2 hasn't wanted to return to a strong military posture and the others hasn't wanted it to either, but that's now changing and hopefully that's good. UK is above the NATO guideline of 2%, France is close. What do you want? In the 80-ies, the US spent 6% of GDP mostly to contain the Russian Empire. What has Ukraine military support cost the US now for these 2 years? 0.3% of GDP spent on your own arms factories renewing your inventory. Is that bad enough for you to let the Russian Empire do whatever?
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  193.  @mickbeeee  UK just supplied a few dozen Storm Shadows (first delivery under Starmer). I think both ATACMS and Storm Shadow are in quite short supply unfortunately. I'm pretty convinced they'll keep using them for deep strikes though, but we'll see.
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  194. Honesty and Trump in the same sentence? That's rich.
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  195. Then it should improve.
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  196.  @DerajDoh  problem is that he's not honest, he just pretends to be. He's clearly post truth anti-establishment, eroding trust and governability in the west.
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  197.  @MC_heart4  that was not my claim.
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  198.  @AD-pb4vq  my point is that EVs aren't more energy efficient, they just present primary power source flexibility. And I do agree with you that this is a major benefit.
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  199.  @84Actionjack  I don't see how that is "s__t the bed". Can you explain?
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  200.  @martinclark6952  Harris has made an awesome start of her campaign, has real momentum and strong credentials from her California career. Claiming otherwise and alluding to uncorroborated smears by a post-truther Trump vice-presidential wannabe who has flip-flopped even more than JD Vance himself, is hardly a "great explanation".
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  201. Yes, but perhaps that's preferable to unfettered disinfo campaigns.
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  202. I think it was a pretty good take. On balance, something has to be done about disinfo. Overcorrection isn't currently the problem.
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  203. Completely irrelevant. Here he's laying out facts, not making a prediction.
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  204.  @SignalCorps1  why do you guys think the US is particularly "printing money"? Considering the inflation rate has come down and the M2 money supply is on the same level as 3 years ago, what are the statistics that back that up?
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  205.  @ОлегТурчев-ц4ш  the iraq war was not genocidal because it didn't aim to destroy any religious, ethnic or national group of Iraqis.
    2
  206. There's not.
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  207.  @davidpnewton  it's trivially true that fallout will be patchy due to rain, and that it will reach the entire southern hemisphere eventually. But Ireland did not get health-significant fallout from Chernobyl and Romania wouldn't get health-significant fallout from a tactical nuke on Ukraine's front line. The "hotspots" wouldn't be hot enough to be significant.
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  208.  @davidanon1568  ah, didn't Ritter and Macgregor tell you that Ukrainian counter-artillery is completely superior? What a surprise.
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  209.  @bloodgout  fallout patterns are complex, but of course most of it and the really high concentrations will be deposited fairly soon based on lower altitude winds in a cigar-shaped plume in the prevailing wind direction.
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  210.  @jasonneugebauer5310  depends on the definition of "ruined" I guess. Let's say we have a huge pool of water, below grade, with no drains, and the reactor modules are operating while submerged in that pool of water. How to compromise that setup, with those tools, to get a significant radioactive release outside the plant perimeter? (I'm describing the NuScale setup, btw.)
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  211.  @jasonneugebauer5310  why would being in a pool add complexity? The point is that it radically lowers complexity. The NRC agreed that due to this design facilitating passive safety, e.g. no nuclear-rated backup power is necessary. After 70 years with nuclear power, we have experienced no significant sabotage attempts. It's apparently not a very attractive target.
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  212. No, it's truly a choice between candidates. The personal qualities of the president are of overshadowing importance, and Trump is wildly unfit for office. The choice between party platforms is in the elections for congress.
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  213.  @stevebriggs9399  he ran multiple wars and launched a coup attempt.
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  214.  @JJthename55  it's not about thought police, it's about combating major volumes of disinfo from malicious actors. I don't think we should go after a grandma who happens to be wrong on the internet, I think we should go after businesses (including influencers) thriving on peddling disinfo.
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  215.  @dreambuffer  fair enough, but counterfactuals are very difficult and it's not that clear that Mossadeq was that democratic either. What we know is that losers can't write history and the most crucial difference between e.g. Atatürk and the Shah may just be that the latter happened to be overthrown.
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  216. ​ @GotGracexxxxx  ah, so you're cool and don't really care, but I'm incredibly invested? Ok, nice. I'm finding the "oh, we supported someone not perfect" criticism vacuous and even dangerous, that's all. We won't find perfection and we can't expect liberal democracies to just appear and self-sustain out of thin air from entrenched rent-seeking power structures while everybody agrees and sing kumbaya.
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  217. Trump failed on Covid. Inflation has got nothing to do with the white house.
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  218.  @jameshobbs6092  where?
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  219.  @Thai-Tanic.  as a user of new and rapidly evolving tech, I wouldn't expect the prices and performances to remain as-is. I think Tesla buyers will survive. As for me, I buy my cars new but then keep them for 10 years or something like that and then they're not worth anything much anyways.
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  220.  @LRRPFco52  batteries last longer than the cars' frames and longer than ICE engines, so the battery replacement cost is irrelevant.
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  221.  @dantech1  I don't like what Germany does, I think it should have spent the money on nuclear instead. Regardless, the US easily has the money to fix this and the other things you mention. Easily. You will hardly even notice the cost, even if you don't factor in gasoline savings. Do a napkin calc, you'll see.
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  222.  @juanzingarello4005  in the month of June 2023, around 1.3 million plug-ins were delivered globally, a rough 36% increase over June 2022. Growth continues. If GM and Ford doesn't want to keep up, they don't have to.
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  223. It's not the uranium that's the problem, that's geostrategically well distributed. It's the enrichment capacity and fuel fabrication plants.
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  224.  @Withnail1969  if better ores are exhausted or embargoed, then the previously crappy ores become good ores. And again, uranium is geostrategically well distributed, and it's very cheap fuel so we can absorb price hikes without being significantly hurt.
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  225. By 2100, China's working age population will plummet from 900m to 270m. What's Peru going to do about it?
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  226. Look at e.g. when Tucker interviews RT staff/traitors like col Macgregor and agrees with them.
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  227. It's THE solution though.
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  228.  @LoneWolf-wp9dn  I don't see that many practical issues. Blaze a trail through the red tape and build. Almost all the globe's electricity is generated in countries that can easily build. (15 countries are building right now.)
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  229.  @LoneWolf-wp9dn  China has built 6 reactors of the Hualong One design and has another 11 under construction. Of course it's hard to standardize when we don't build, but whenever we build appreciable numbers, then a number of them will be essentially the same (while evolving slightly to become increasingly economical to build as we learn). I fully agree that we're not there in terms of series production and momentum, but the tech is available and remains the best solution. Yes, the current US model is fracked gas with intermittent RE fuel extenders, and I guess that's fine also in a sense. Not sure it'll fly in China and Europe though.
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  230.  @LoneWolf-wp9dn  I think that's a natural conclusion to draw in a way, especially considering the allure of fuel breeding, breaking away from the dependency on the seemingly scarce U235 and potentially reducing waste volumes. However, waiting for innovations and tech silver bullets defies both history, where nuclear construction was cheap before supply chains were destroyed, and the conclusions that should be drawn from e.g. solar and wind cost curves. The problem isn't a lack of tech, the problem is a lack of volumes. It's a Catch 22 that can be resolved by any of: 1. Determined build programmes/incentives by governments (like for solar and wind). 2. Deep cuts in red tape to unleash private construction. 3. Hoping that one or two SMRs will slowly get some traction and blaze a trail through regulation and slowly start accumulating volumes and thus cost reductions. China is the only one doing 1 currently, but others like France may be about to start. None are doing 2. Most of the rest are doing 3.
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  231. ​ @biblehistoryscience3530  a state actor like Ukraine can bypass safety/control measures on a nuke and gain operational control. Asking Ukraine to borrow that money is: a) unconscionably stingy b) TDS c) a stalling tactic aimed to create a new bill that will go back and forth between the senate and the house "we don't have any money, and we are heading for an economic Depression." This is complete nonsense. The US has a 25 trillion dollar economy. The money is truly peanuts to you. And if it had some significance, the corresponding weapons production would serve to maintain economic activity/demand.
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  232.  @biblehistoryscience3530  what are you talking about? What mountains of cash in bank accounts? Please stop listening to Russian propaganda. Ukraine needs weapons and the US can supply that. It also needs financial support to keep afloat, and the EU can do that.
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  233.  @michaeldavis3819  you poor guy. I see your suffering. Of course you go to Trump, the only one who treats you with respect and won't do surgery on your kids.
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  234. So why doesn't it go faster?
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  235.  @adrianpaz472  who cares, that's sunk costs. If solar and wind is cheaper than fossil fuels+maintenance, then the fossils would be replaced ahead of time. Random googlings: "Coal power continues to expand in China, despite the government's pledges and goals. In the first half of 2023, construction was started on 37 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity, 52 GW was permitted, while 41 GW of new projects were announced and 8 GW of previously shelved projects were revived." "India has an estimated 65.3 GW of proposed, on-grid coal capacity under active development: 30.4 GW under construction and 34.9 GW in pre-construction"
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  236.  @adrianpaz472  agree that nuclear and hydro can have OPEX costs below 20 usd/mwh, but not coal and gas. If China and India could build RE for CAPEX+OPEX 20 usd/mwh with no limitations, I don't understand why they would build any coal. I don't agree RE numbers are higher. 37 GW of coal construction in China in just half a year is far more than RE, adjusted for capacity factors. Granted, the coal might to some degree replace old and worse coal, but why do even that if they could just as well build 20 USD/MWh RE? It doesn't add up.
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  237.  @adrianpaz472  doesn't make that much sense, considering you could retrain for solar/wind jobs. Perhaps the below 20 usd per MWh reports we get are simply not honestly calculated LCOEs, and/or that it doesn't take into consideration high system costs for grid extensions, balancing the intermittence and more that you don't have with coal?
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  238.  @adrianpaz472  have you looked into the 2023 lazard report? If you look at page 8, it has levelized cost of energy + cost of firming intermittency. The lowest cost for solar is $60 in a market with very low penetration, and $141 in CAISO with high penetration. The lowest for wind is $55 for a market with low penetration and $132 for CAISO. You can also note how expensive it is to firm solar + storage, meaning that the storage that solar is paired with is far too little to truly firm it. Also, lazard has no sub $20 unsubsidised costs even without firming.
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  239. Why are you listening to that Russian propaganda show?
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  240. @gabrielorville5334  its much more common to make mistakes if one immerses oneself in lies and distortions than if not. The difference in range between atacms and the Russian medium range nuclear delivery missile can be found almost everywhere, so I'm unsure what the Russian propaganda channel added?
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  241.  @LTVoyager  indoctrinated? I'm sure you don't even acknowledge Trump launched a coup attempt after the previous election.
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  242. Completely irrelevant to everything. Clown move, didn't work, couldn't work.
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  243. China is building 5-6 GW nuclear per year now which may not sound like much, but over decades it adds up. If they triple this and introduce coal liquefaction they could become truly energy independent.
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  244.  @Green_Moon77  to go for full energy independence is probably an expense they're not willing to take, but we should consider how vulnerabilities will evolve. Chinese oil production is 4 Mbpd, imports from Russia 3 Mbpd, consumption 14 Mbpd, strategic reserves probably 500 Mb. So 70 days of non-Russian imports in reserve. As transport is electrified and construction normalizes, the vulnerability is set to decline. If a large-scale blockade breaks out, the need for shipping fuel and aviation fuel will be reduced as well. I simply don't think China is in that bad a position.
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  245. Ask Marjorie Traitor Greene.
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  246.  @LRRPFco52  "Video was made before IRBM was launched with hypersonic MIRVs." I'm pretty sure that Russia made at least 10 other attacks that day that did more actual damage.
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  247.  @xanovaria  that wasn't meaningful.
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  248.  @newguy6935  again, the coal plant is needed as well. Solar can just save fuel when the Sun shines. Solar + batteries upfront costs are much higher than a coal plant's.
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  249.  @newguy6935  I know because I've checked the numbers. Sure solar can deliver peak power in some geographies, but only until there's 10% solar or something because at that point the peak has inversed into a duck curve.
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  250. Create coal liquefaction plants.
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  251. He is increasingly erratic and glitching. And unlike Biden, he has neither wisdom, maturity nor much knowledge to fall back on when he declines further.
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  252.  @michaelderobio5256  so why are you reproducing Russian propaganda?
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  253. Only Russian bots claim ATACMS is too complex for Ukrainians to operate. No normal human is dvmb enough to believe that. Punching in coordinates and learning to load missiles into ramps isn't hard.
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  254.  @GraeMatterz  nonsense propaganda. Ukraine can easily operate the atacms on its own.
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  255. @GraeMatterz  since then nuclear powers have experienced humiliating defeats many times without resorting to nuclear war.
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  256.  @richardtaylor6341  it made sense that you made a policy statement that I could critique, rather than me trying to cover all possible policy statements up front. I was vague waiting for you to move. And now you did, so here goes: "to Americans, if the Russians have a more defensible border?" "What does it matter to me if my neighbor has a more enjoyable s-x life?" This focuses only on the male neighbor, and cherry-picks a positive aspect for him, completely disregarding the screams for help we can all hear. I recognize that as a Tucker-esque stance of currently fashionable national egoism. I find it morally bankrupt, but you guys seem to thrive on condemnations, so let's agree to disagree, perhaps? Instead, let's check if there is some chance you would find a view on US' geostrategic interest compelling: 1. The US and the world have thrived on peace and trade since the end of WW2. It's based on a post-WW2 rules-based world order where it's not allowed to expand empires by wars. Russia is now challenging that order, and if we allow it to stand, it and other countries will go at it again and again, increasing the risk of another world war. 2. If you find the US democracy valuable, then know that a democracy with 4% of the world population probably won't be able to sustain itself if other democracies fall. 3. Russia's current regime does whatever it can to undermine democracies and tendencies toward democracy worldwide. If Russia is defeated, that major source of instability and antidemocratic tendencies may well stop influencing the world, leading to global improvements in governance and peace. 4. There's a reason the US historically has spent 6%-ish of GDP and more to contain the Russian Empire. Now the US spends 3-3.5% to contain both the Russian Empire and China, and MAGA types claim 0.2% to Ukraine to grind down the Russian military and defend freedom in a hot war is too much. It makes little sense, economically. It's not significant money in a historical or geostrategic sense.
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  257.  @richardtaylor6341  where did you go, Richard?
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  258.  @richardtaylor6341  could you double-check by expanding this subthread and see if you see my reply? I see it. Might be shadowbanned though.
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  259.  @richardtaylor6341  ok, that reply I do not see, unfortunately. Then I guess your reply was shadowbanned, not mine. I'm so tired of yt.
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  260.  @richardtaylor6341  I see two comments. First "I didn't understand your ...", then "So this is mybr3rd reply ...". I interpret that as you posted three and I see two. I'll make replies to those two.
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  261.  @richardtaylor6341  it's good that you'd call the cops in the analogy, and yes, in Ukraine there was a clear assault. In the international arena, there's no cop to call, though. So either the big strong guys intervenes, or the assaults will increase. "there are alot of if/then questions to cover before I would decide yes or no upon the circumstance." If we're not willing to uphold a principle, and instead check the circumstances each time, we'll see a lot more assaults. But even if you check the circumstances in this case, it makes extremely good sense to help Ukraine defend itself and eject the occupiers.
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  262.  @richardtaylor6341  "I also asked why it was morally corrupt to not want Americans dying in Ukraine" Ukraine isn't asking for that. "or spending tax dollars on it for that matter" My main argument was that it was strategically sound for America, and low cost, to do so. Do you have any reply to that? "Was it morally corrupt to be against the Vietnam War?" Idk, very different situation. The Korean war at least saved the South. Was it worth it? I think so. "Bretton Woods order, it's purpose, and lack of validity post fall of the USSR" Not sure how Bretton Woods is relevant.
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  263.  @richardtaylor6341  "No crime E Eh? Out of you crane?" Haha, good msking. But yes, that's right, that would be the strategic goals. "Or is it change the leadership in the bear den itself?" No, I think containment is the name of the gme. For loosening sanctions, we need some important concessions from Russia in setting things right after the war and ending its large-scale propaganda operations.
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  264.  @richardtaylor6341  most of lend lease was forgiven, or sold at 90% discount. If similar, that's ok by me. I think that without a change in leadership, Russia will remain deeply hostile and revanchist, so it makes sense to not do free trade with it. If there's a change in leadership, there's an opportunity to be milder, but also, we shouldn't pretend Russia wasn't at fault; we should make that point felt somehow. Germany actually had to recognize it was at fault in WW2. Defeat helped it reorient to become a normal country. Russia hasn't gone through anything like this, so its nationalism and myths of greatness have no counter.
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  265.  @chuckhoyle1211  the Russian regime is definitely "less" and unstable. There's no moral equivalence between democracies and that empire of lies and mafia methods.
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  266.  @vandogg14  it's definitely good vs evil. There's no moral equivalence between the self interests of a democratic alliance and that of a mafia state built on lies.
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  267.  @rustyshackleford8370  there's no moral equivalence. We're "allowed" to flip dictatorships to democracies and Russia isn't allowed to do the reverse. Also having a few foreign military advisors and some manpads in Mexico wouldn't be enough for the US to invade Mexico. Also, Ukraine hasn't "passed policy that directly targets Russian civilians in Ukraine", and hasn't funded anything ISIS-like. You're just reproducing Russian propaganda. If you're not a Russian bot, why have you chosen the belief in, and reproduction of, Russian propaganda as a hobby?
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  268. Russia broke the medium range missile treaty through its Iskander system. The US got fed up with it and on Trump's watch, they withdrew from it. Not sure there's anything else holding them back?
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  269. No, what it takes to be far right is to: 1. reject MSM and be in a bubble of Russian disinfo 2. develop a pride in callousness 3. want to stick it to the man
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  270.  @WhatWeDoChannel  Jesus Christ the Lord is just a meme, dude. Work with reality, not fantasy.
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  271.  @WhatWeDoChannel  Heaven and hell are also just memes.
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  272. Thanks Ivan. Even if the US one was criminal, ever heard of the Chinese government?
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  273. "My understanding was the US supplies the missles, and provides the personnel to target/launch." If that's you "understanding", you're listening too much to Russian propaganda.
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  274. It's not viable unless you build, but if you build, costs come down. With the current economic structures and current attitudes toward nuclear, this is a catch 22.
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  275. Why not? It's 14% globally now. What stops us from multiplying with seven?
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  276. This is a time of bots and disinfo. If that's not curbed, I'm not sure democracy will survive. But we'll see, perhaps.
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  277. Of course there were victims. Financial institutions price loans and insurances for risk, and if a taker fraudulently misrepresents the risk to the giver, then the giver doesn't get a fair price even if he's lucky and the loan is repaid or the insurance isn't invoked.
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  278.  @bigbubba4314  people can't commit fraud just because other parties should do their due diligence. There were clearly victims as banks and insurance companies got reduced revenue. And there are millions of investors, including e.g. those with pension plans, investing in financial companies. Also, such fraudulent behavior skews the playing field to disfavor the more honest and solvent companies, leading to efficiency losses and increased risks in the economy as a whole. Also, he defrauded tax payers by doing the opposite valuations in many cases. And he submitted other false claims e.g. to get to manage Ferry Point golf course, and then didn't abide by the terms of the contract.
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  279.  @bigbubba4314  dude, Trump was found guilty by a judge who actually knows the law and applies it faithfully, while you just repeat MAGA pseudolaw propaganda. Are you sovereign citizen as well? Come on.
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  280.  @bigbubba4314  "is that the same judge that declared him guilty prior to the trial?" AFAIK, he didn't, and his verdict is pretty uncontroversial in real legal circles. Your pseudolaw notwithstanding. "still waiting for that fraud definition." Google is your friend.
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  281.  @Quickshot0  this is true and it's also probably true that battery prices will drop considerably with added scale and market saturation regardless of fundamental tech improvements. In the first phase of a technology shift to tech with better characteristics, like LCDs and EVs, prices are high partly because of high demand/low supply + fabs are new and not written off yet. I actually think it will be fairly easy and that the EV momentum is unstoppable. This is what the "invisible hand" does best.
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  282. Yeah, who cares she's a Russian asset, right?
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  283.  @julianskinner3697  here's an explanation: Putin feels he is Russia, and that he/Russia deserves to be respected because of its size and history. However, the US has decided too much since the Russian Empire's partial collapse in 1990, like Kosovo and other things, and not given Putin/Russia the respect he craves. So this respect has to be created, and Russia again propelled to a position as a great power. Here's another explanation: Unfinished business. The second iraq war was unfinished business efter the first. GWB wanted to resolve it with honor. Crimea and Donbass was unfinished business and Putin is aging. He needed to resolve it now with honor to be great in the history books. Taiwan is unfinished business. Xi needs to resolve it well before leaving office in 5-10 years.
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  284. It's not about hate speech, it's about systematic disinfo.
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  285. What would be the advantage of forcing people to buy wildly intermittent powersources for their roofs?
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  286.  @mikeesull  what do you think of Russia's double tap attack on Odessa yesterday? High precision Iskander missile hit residential buildings, and then later another missile on the same site to hit rescue workers. 20 dead and 73 wounded so far, including many rescue workers.
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  287. It's easy for Australia to take an all-of-the-above approach. It has enough uranium for both any domestic purposes and exports.
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  288.  @calc1657  Ukraine support tracker has the US at 67 billion euro in support before the additional 61 billion usd funding was announced, and fairly little of the latter has been disbursed. So it's still under 100 billion dollars in total US aid, not 100s. The Budapest Memorandum is a formal signed agreement based on long negotiations. The we-will-not-expand-NATO promise is doubtful if it was ever given, but if it was, it was an oral promise by one US administration given to the Soviets, and neither that US administration nor the Soviets are around anymore.
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  289.  BobV-nk1yq  the next US election seems extremely important, and you have the two-party system you have. As a Swede, I sincerely hope Americans who value democracy and world stability will hold their noses if needed and vote for Biden.
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  290. ​ @calc1657  is it so hard to admit error? The disbursed amount is far less than 100, so the statement "we've given them 100s of billions" is wrong. I replied "you actually haven't, yet", and got the reply "we actually have". So this is a now a lie that you refuse to step back from. Why? One can split hairs over it, but the US was the driving force in convincing Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances of territorial integrity. To me, that creates a clear moral obligation to assist. It's also in the US geopolitical interest to do so. Feel free to refuse here too, then let's just agree we have a very different sense of honor, obligation and duty, among other things.
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  291.  @calc1657  again, the disbursed amount is far less than 100. Hard to acknowledge error? The US was the driving force in convincing Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances of territorial integrity. That creates a clear moral obligation to assist. It's also in the US geopolitical interest to do so. Let's perhaps agree that we have a very different sense of honor, obligation and duty?
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  292.  @JH-jx1hs  I was sarcastic. Why not listen to the insights he brings, combine with other insights and your own judgement to make predictions instead of putting emphasis on his predictions.
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  293.  @JH-jx1hs  the absurdity of my original comment is plain enough for anyone to understand its sarcasm.
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  294. @JH-jx1hs  well, to me it was obviously humorous, but the proof is in the pudding I guess. So I agree I failed.
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  295. EU oil consumption is down 20% since 2005. And I guess future consumption will keep dropping 1% per year only taking account that plug-ins are gradually replacing the ICE fleet.
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  296. There's no hatred of Russia. We're just honest about it being stuck in time.
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  297.  @platoplombo15  sure, only you are uniquely not in a cult. You're believing Russian propaganda because you can think for yourself.
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  298. He let Carlson speak for himself, he's a propagandist by his own admission.
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  299. Is it the weave?
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  300.  @tylerwood9585  it's easy to lose one's mind when T is putting an anti-vaxxer in charge of health and a Russian asset in charge of US intelligence.
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  301.  @luckynyaa2826  what makes you laugh? Rssias inferiority?
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  302.  @echoeversky  yes, but please elaborate.
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  303.  @luckynyaa2826  what's funny?
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  304. Russia has supported peace movements, anti-vaxxer movements, greens, anti-nuclear people and so forth for many decades. Anything to weaken democracies.
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  305. How is it propaganda? It's just a sane value judgement.
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  306. How is it divisive? Pretty straightforward and uncontroversial points from PZ.
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  307.  @a.brekkan4965  sure, but the destroyed equipment numbers have been plausible, and it's reasonable to expect a multiplier of men KIA or WIA per destroyed vehicle. I don't see why Ukraine would lie only about men.
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  308.  @a.brekkan4965  again, most data in the Ukrainian losses fit well with what we know. Also manpower losses ebb and flow naturally with what we know about conditions on the battlefield. Thus I think they're plausible. Also, Ukraine is dependent on goodwill, first and foremost, so it's important for Ukraine not to lie to a western audience, because people would feel betrayed and withdraw support. However, for Moscow, lies have been their bread and butter for more than a decade. It makes eminent sense for them to lie now about losses, also to reduce support for Ukraine in the west.
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  309.  @nshs1234  it's fascinating how so many people who cling to this straw in order to disregard the fact that she's a Russian asset and conspiracy theorist.
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  310. ​ @michaelbizon444 TDS is a sign of mental maturity.
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  311.  @sifu64  they did everything to avert it, except, unfortunately, deter.
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  312.  @matthogg2252  1. President Putin, you lead the country with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and the largest artillery assets, and some of the largest army and aviation in the world. Meanwhile, Europe has clearly demilitarized. How would Ukraine being part of NATO constitute a serious threat to Russian national security? 2. President Putin, the post-WW2 rules based international order has reduced war deaths and conflicts a lot, and in that internationally agreed order, countries can't change borders by threat or by force. Now you opt to return to an order where the worlds' empires grab land to expand. How will that improve the world? 3. President Putin, most of the world understands the n-tzi nonsense that Russia is telling us about Ukraine is not matching the reality of Ukrainian governance. Have you become fooled by your own disinformation campaigns into believing that the Ukrainian government is actually n-tzi, and what has been your own personal role in developing them? 4. President Putin, thousands die or are maimed every day in the war, millions are displaced, cities have been reduced to rubble. Can you explain to me how the war will be of net benefit to the world, or even a net benefit to ethnic Russians? 5. President Putin, how come the Ukrainians preferred to orient toward Western democracies rather than toward your Russian oligarch/FSB rule? Why isn't Russia the shining city on a hill that neighbors would like to ally with?
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  313.  @matthogg2252  I certainly don't know what his answers would be, or even what the right answers would be to at least a few of them. Do you? If so, please give them.
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  314.  @matthogg2252  no I don't understand that. Please tell me. And at the same time, please tell me why Estonia, Latvia and Finland as neighboring NATO members are tolerated, and why the addition of a fourth country would make any material difference.
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  315.  @MrToradragon  Sweden has a huge paper industry where much of the energy comes from the wood itself, so it all depends a bit on how you count what numbers you get. But yes, the 50% hydro is of electricity only. Much, much less of total energy.
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  316.  @tech010101x  BEVs have not gotten much better GHG-wise, the reason being that the battery improvements have been used for more kWhrs, not for less weight/cost. The 2014 Mercedes B class had a 28 kWh battery. The grids aren't that much better either. But the future is rather promising.
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  317.  @tech010101x  I haven't tracked the details of GHG emissions in battery production, no, but I bought my first Nissan Leaf in 2015 and it had 24 kWh. I loved it and it was perfect for my commute (with free charging at work), yet I understood it would not suffice for mass market adoption. Then in 2017 I switched it for 30 kWh Leaf and in 2019 I bought a Leaf with 40 kWh, and I still have that one, and it still has too little battery for me to use it for longer trips. The latest Leaf is 60 kWh and I think that's in the low end of being adequate. So my simple assumption is that improvements in GHG emissions per kWh of battery has not yet resulted in lower GHG emissions per BEV. It should going forward though, as 60-80 kWh battery is probably the sweet spot for small to medium sized cars. Thus further improvements should result in price, weight and GHG reductions per BEV.
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  318.  @MarcoNierop  mandatory solar PV canopies over parking lots in FRANCE of all countries!? The world has truly gone mad!
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  319. No, that wasn't portrayed as absolute truth.
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  320.  @Alexadria205  this guy probably thinks so, while thinking Ritter and Macgregor are honest truth-tellers.
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  321. Yes, Europe is big enough to do that, but not cold-turkey. The US needs to give us 2-3 more years of support. We can probably arrange to pay for it if you're now too stingy to support democracy and freedom. The issue for Europe isn't money, it's actual defense production. The issue for the US isn't money, but that Trump needs Russian support to win the election and thus get out of legal troubles.
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  322.  @ron88303  European allies have largely adapted to US strategy in this matter. The US wanted to be dominant, it wanted weak and peaceful Germany and Japan after WW2 and later. It wanted non-proliferation with a US nuclear umbrella instead. And so on. I think it's real TDS to accept Trump's narrative that Europe isn't "paying" and that this is somehow wrong. Yeah, of course it might be time to change allies' strategy and posture, but it should be done responsibly and gradually, not forcing it by throwing the world into utter chaos and letting Russia destroy a big allied democracy it promised to protect. You putting democracy and freedom within citation marks explains your comment.
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  323. @GardeningforFreedom are you a muslim?
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  324. Donbass Doug is a completely ridiculous Kremlin propagandist.
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  325.  @gstickley4652  but RFK policy comments makes it likely that he's straight up a Russian asset. Are you sure foreign policy is important to you?
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  326.  @sifu64  look into it. You'll see the same if objective enough.
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  327. It's not about the mining, that's not reliant on Russia. It's about enrichment and fuel fabrication, primarily.
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  328.  @karlsonkopfspalter3127  Putin just wants Russia to be great again. I don't think he's entertaining these complicated "reach defensible borders" ideas, nor wants endless expansion. He just wants greatness, to be able to call the shots. For too long, the US has called the shots and Putin hasn't been able to stop them. So he's avenging that and restoring his and Russia's rightful place among nations. Sure he'd like to take the Baltics again, especially since there's Russian population there and it'd challenge and break NATO's article 5. So perhaps it doesn't matter that much exactly why.
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  329.  @aussiehardwood6196  wow, such drama.
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  330.  @DumbDempolicysayswhat  well, have a good day, grandpa.
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  331.  @DumbDempolicysayswhat  have a good day then, gramps.
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  332.  @DumbDempolicysayswhat  ok, boomer.
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  333. ​ @DumbDempolicysayswhat  we'll see if his subscriber count drops a lot then. 824,000 right now. Let's check in in a month from now.
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  334.  @DumbDempolicysayswhat  interesting, I can't respond to that due to moderation. Let's see if this comment sticks.
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  335.  @nicoles9077  problem is that what you're saying simply isn't true. The fact is that Trump wants the border unsolved until the election, so Ukraine isn't really used as extortion. So Ukrainian heroes are dying because Trump wants that, and border legislation isn't enacted because Trump blocks that too.
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  336.  @nicoles9077  Trump wants the border issue to remain to campaign on it, so it's simply not correct that Ukraine is used to extort democrats and Biden to do something about the border. Trump is blocking all such bills for different reasons.
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  337. Regarding the dirtiness of oil shale/oil sands, I think it could be reduced with nuclear power to generate steam/heat to help with extraction and also refining. If one so wishes, nuclear can be semi-portable and generate steam with low costs and no emissions (you don't need a turbine).
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  338.  @Simple_But_Expensive  I didn't know there's stranded natgas where Canada is extracting oil shale/sands. If so I guess that's cheaper. But the micro reactors I'm thinking of are truck-deliverable, sealed, autonomous, ~25 years of fuel life. Look up e.g. "Mitsubishi Heavy aims to build 'reactor-on-a-truck' by 2030s".
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  339.  @cemasikoglu9597 give up your country then to an aggressive neighbor that will torture people and subject you to decades or generations of brutal fascist colonial dictatorship while trying to eradicate your national identity. It's easy to be a coward and a traitor for other countries. Not as easy for your own.
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  340. Why? It's not about you, it's about the deliberate disinfo campaigns.
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  341.  @aaronbaker2186  no, it's not.
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  342. As a EU citizen, I fail to see how America is greater do to more free speech. Can you elaborate?
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  343. Tbh I don't think Peter captures it very well. Let me try here: 1. Thorium is proliferation-safe, not because it's completely impossible to make weapons using its fuel cycle, but because it's hard enough so that any would-be nuclear weapons state would stay clear and instead build a dedicated plutonium-producing uranium-based reactor on the side. 2. Thorium does solve the waste problem, as it uses all of the fuel and not just 3.5% (so the volumes are reduced to 1/20-th or less), and it can eat old high-level waste. 3. Also it is abundant enough for us to never run out of fuel. 4. As a spin-off to 3, it's actually abundant enough that no appreciable mining would be needed, making moot the argument that mining for nuclear fuel is an environmental issue. 5. But otoh, ordinary/old reactor tech isn't currently particularly constrained by the above issues that thorium solves. 6. The current roadblock for nuclear is rather overregulation and extreme safety requirements driving costs. 7. Thorium could partially solve this if the regulatory bodies decide that molten salt reactors are inherently meltdown safe (and arguments could be made that they are), and peels away most regulation. This is wishful thinking currently. 8. The reprocessing needed in the thorium fuel cycle is potentially a bit dirty, so this might again make regulatory costs spiral upwards.
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  344. But the Americans knew they would attack and told all their allies.
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  345.  @wam7484  nuclear isn't magical. If you build a lot, you learn and costs go down, not up.
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  346.  @dansanger5340  in the early days of nuclear, power reactors were smaller. Also we have plenty of small military reactors. We know the tech works well and we can calculate the costs. I don't really see the problem.
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  347.  @dansanger5340  if the world around the year 2000 had said that it would love for solar to be the answer to all our problems and that you think R&D should continue (with no build support), solar wouldn't have gone anywhere. Same for wind, but arguably with slightly different timing. Same for SMRs, but SMRs don't have the intermittency issue and are arbitrarily scalable. SMRs is a great answer to all our problems and it's available today. It doesn't come down to R&D, there are several adequate designs (although obviously the first builds may generate insights and tweaks). Instead, what's needed are support for the first dozens of builds and probably some streamlined regulation. Your assumption that nuclear "will continue to fail unless there is very good evidence to the contrary" is setting up a catch-22 situation. Nuclear succeeded in the 70-ies and 80-ies in many countries, including France, and this is irrefutable evidence that it can and will succeed if we are determined to make it a success.
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  348. I think Peter's observations are even more salient after that.
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  349.  @phatbackbeat6553  it'll be interesting to see how long it'll take you to figure out that TDS is justified. One would think these first few weeks of dishonor and incompetence would have been enough, but apparently not.
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  350.  @looseycanon  if we start building out nuclear to cover all baseload, the price of it would come down enough that we could load follow with it too for most of what hydro can't cope with.
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  351. Desperate lies by Putin.
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  352. Delulu pro max.
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  353.  @RedShiftGalaxy  appreciate Tolkien references. Don't appreciate lies and conspiracy theories about the elections.
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  354.  @RedShiftGalaxy  some are just desperate to believe Trump's lies about the election. You know, it won't hurt to see through him. The earlier the better. You'll be fine.
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  355.  @kerriwilson7732  stop with the 15 million. There are no 15 million differences anywhere. At least get the numbers right.
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  356. Putin thanks you for distrusting anything that isn't Russian propaganda.
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  357. He seems to be broadly in favor of democracy, freedom and prosperity, and thus in favor of western geopolitical strength and stamina.
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  358.  @blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311  yeah, Russia isn't hurting at all. Most of their military assets gone, half a million dead and wounded after 2.5 years of war that was supposed to take a few weeks, and complete and utter reputation destruction. And Russia is maintaing the lines only because the west imposes restrictions on the use of western weaponry so that Russia won't lose too fast.
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  359.  @blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311  funny that, "acceptable cost", as Russia is being utterly ground down with no progress.
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  360.  @kevf  that's fine, I'll just see if WW3 happens very soon due to this "escalation from the west". If not you were wrong.
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  361.  @kevf  I'll just wait to see if you're right that Russia will react with WW3 now. I think not.
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  362.  @blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311  it takes a special level of stupidity to not recognize that the only party escalating this conflict is the aggressor, Russia.
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  363.  @kevf  for more than two years of war, Ukraine hasn't even been allowed to target Russian soil. Every day, Russia has hit Charkiv with S300 and S400 batteries with bad precision (these are not designed to hit ground targets). Enormous amounts of death and destruction. Now Ukraine has at last been allowed to hit back. And you think that's an "escalation" and that it's "painfully naive" to state that Russia is the only aggressor? Seriously.
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  364. Governments usually have a balance of power, appeals courts and so on.
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  365. I guess they'll tell the truth about which islamist group did it, but they'll throw in some invented connections to Ukraine and Western intelligence services.
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  366.  @msimon6808  what do you mean by "except for production"? Idk how long US natgas fracking will be viable, and ofc it makes economic sense for you to develop it. But it is finite.
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  367.  @FamilyManMoving  I have a similar background, I would say. Agreed on better investments and especially SMRs. I think we simply need to build them and costs will come down as trails are blazed through the red tape, supply chains are warmed up and experience is gained. My understanding is that NuScale has NRC design certification, so that would be a good start. Thank you, have a great weekend!
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  368. The reason the Paducah plant in KY drew so much energy was that it was based on old gaseous diffusion tech that requires 50x more energy per SWU than newer centrifuge tech. To serve the entire US reactor fleet with fuel, an 80 MW centrifuge plant would suffice. So make 4x40 MW geographically distributed plants to have redundancy, ability to help allies, ability to increase fuel stockpiles, and some capacity for re-enriching old tailings. 160 MW continuous power is all that's needed for that.
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  369. What has become outdated in this vid?
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  370.  @axeletzold9406  but they see how he's flip-flopping and they see his misogyny. Like Trump, he apparently has no principles (if we don't count disdain for certain groups as a principle).
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  371. No, they aren't.
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  372. Ukrainian count of Russian casualties is 450k, but they've probably not been able to see 30% (some of which is Russians wounding and killing each other). And then it's 600k.
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  373. What if we want electricity when there's dunkelflaute?
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  374. Don't let the door hit you...
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  375. He was adding transport on top of reindustrialization. So 50%+50%. You're exaggerating the energy costs of the fossil economy. Electrified transport doesn't save much, if any, energy. It just provides the flexibility to use other sources than oil.
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  376. So in 20-30 years, when construction has subsided and land-based transportation has almost fully electrified along with most heavy machinery, China is vulnerable no more. Also, China is building 5-6 GW of nuclear per year. If they run them for 60 years, that's 300-360 GW asymptotically, which is 30% of current generation. They could easily increase this.
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  377. Putin has a rosy picture of the history of the Russian Empire and he thinks it deserves to be great again at the expense of all others, and that he's the guy to do it. He wants to be a great tsar in the history books. He also thinks NATO is a big hindrance on that path, so he wants to make NATO collapse. Thus he attacked Ukraine in order to make it a vassal state again, like Belarus, and in order to challenge NATO cohesion. And when the time is appropriate, e.g. during a Trump presidency, he' grab some territory in e.g. Estonia while rattling nuclear weapons in the hope that NATO's article 5 will not be adhered to, so that NATO collapses. Wars in general are almost always mistakes and fail to reach the hoped-for objectives. NATO desperately tried to negotiate with Putin before the 2022 invasion, but Putin had made up its mind years ago.
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  378. America is big. You HAVE to be able to find someone who can get things done without all of Trumps moral failings.
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  379.  @kevinaltizer  the timing boom and bust cycles are mostly down to luck, presidents can't do much to change that. When they manage to do structural changes to affect long-term growth, it often just benefits the next guy due to delayed effects. Trumps immorality hasn't got that much to do with his policy choices, but rather how he conducts himself personally and how he relates to the office. He sees the presidency as a tool for him to elevate himself, not as an office he holds to serve and make peoples' lives better. He lies like a firehose, he's completely undignified, he's impulsive and dangerous in foreign policy, his business dealings are fraudulent and predatory, and yes, he did try to steal the election and to this day lies about his loss. Also it's completely baffling to me that christians want to vote for him, considering how clear it is that he worships only himself, his dealings with a p-rnst-r, his "grab em by the p-ssy" remarks, his flip-flopping on abortion, his atrocious remarks regarding wounded and killed soldiers (as "losers") and so forth. Honestly, can you convince yourself that he's a believer?
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  380.  @mwsr2521  jan 6 was just the most visible subplot in Trump's coup attempt.
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  381.  @firstjupiter  nah, it's just that gop is hijacked by crazies currently.
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  382. ​ @firstjupiter  it's not that Peter has a huge bias towards dems, it's rather that maga is pushing people away.
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  383. Everyone with some wisdom and maturity will vote democrat this particular election. Why would anyone vote for a deeply misogynistic ticket that attempted a coup after the previous election? Doesn't make much sense, does it?
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  384.  @ABa-os6wm  China last year started six nuclear reactor construction projects at a capital cost of roughly 2.3 USD/KW.
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  385.  @108doublestitches I live in Sweden and our government axed all the EV subsidies about a year ago. Still, in July to October this year, plug-in sales are 60% of total sales.
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  386.  @dcc70  if we need more copper mines, we'll open more copper mines.
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  387. The other countries let 200-ish warheads suffice as deterrance (and the US has expended considerable effort in stopping proliferation to new countries). Only the US and Russia had this runaway MAD race. I would guess China will go to parity with Russia and the US.
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  388.  @Knightfall21  no, it's probably because I listen to what he actually says and judge whether that's factually correct or not, and it is. You reject the facts because they cast shade on a political faction you like. But facts don't care about your feelings.
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  389.  @Knightfall21  so you think it wasn't that TikTok is a hotbed of Russian propaganda vids that convinced Trump, but rather his meeting with Jeff Yass? Possible, but then Zeihan just made a slightly wrong judgement call on this detail. The basic accusation that MAGA is infested with Russian propaganda enablers and propaganda is obviously true.
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  390.  @Knightfall21  so it was Jeff Yass after all?
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  391.  @Knightfall21 I'm asking for your opinion. If not Russia, what made Trump flip?
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  392.  @Knightfall21  if it's an error, it's an error in a detail. His overall take is sound and Russia is a legit boogie man.
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  393. But from a first principles perspective, a nuclear plant is very much like a coal plant. So with enough supply chain maturity, nuclear plants should cost like coal plants (but have close to free fuel).
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  394.  @guywithdacap4713  I know, everybody has this problem. It sucks.
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  395.  @DoloresJNurss  the system isn't buggy as much as it's deliberately very broad and sensitive to make it very hard to game. It doesn't cost yt very much that we're angry at censorship, but it would cost a lot to have to manually check more comments.
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  396. Low penetration solar and wind plants are fairly good at saving fuel in those CCGT plants, aren't they? This extends the era of cheap shale methane. Nuclear doesn't need a breakthrough, it needs less regulation and a determined build program that matures the supply chains a bit.
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  397. Why not? Just by age increases they have 1.5-2 million new men becoming eligible for service during that time.
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  398. Well, if Russia loses 250k/year and their young male population is on the order of 750k/year, they need to be prepared to sacrifice 1/3 of each annual cohort in steady-state.
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  399.  @joespinelli350  turns out nobody knows why they didn't like Harris. Not even the Republicans. She cackles and apparently has said something about plastic straws, that's all they can come up with. And now when people look more closely, they seem to like what they see.
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  400.  @n1ngnuo  stop with the conspiracy theories.
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  401. CIA tries to disrupt dictatorships on the wrong path. The KGB tries to disrupt democracies on the right path.
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  402.  @e13kid  no they didn't. NATO just made sure the rebellion couldn't be crushed by Ghadaffi's heavy weaponry. That was all.
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  403.  @comingverysoon  agreed, and EVs are already pretty far up the S-curve outside of the US.
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  404.  @knpstrr  how old are you?
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  405. Because Biden made it effectively happen, perhaps?
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  406.  @Crumbsoftotailtariansim  can you give a few examples?
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  407. The regulatory and business environment is incredibly important for these things to happen at scale and fast, probably much more important than demographics. The Chinese are researching reactor tech very broadly and could conceivably put SMRs everywhere, but perhaps the US will beat them to it. Germany won't, that's for sure. Anti-GMO laws in Europe and many other places may hold us way back. And so on. We very much need to be faster than China in all these areas, so we need to make sure that our regulatory frameworks go hand in hand with progress.
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  408.  @titanicisshit1647  just as an example, China has commissioned an LFTR, a Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor. According to SINAP documents, the reactor aims to test pyro-processing, refueling, and continuous gas removal techniques, study the stability and safety of its operation, and experiment with a thorium-uranium fuel cycle. Of course they're building on old American know-how, but they're also doing further R&D to clear various engineering hurdles and throwing a lot of PhDs on it. I think it'd be foolish to underestimate them.
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  409. Businesses aren't allowed to sell harmful products with false claims, but they can sell pure false claims that are harmful to us. Make it make sense.
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  410.  @DanRichH  so what? We're talking about what is, not what could be.
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  411. Sounds written by an American. Translation to English: We setup a world order with ourselves as the sole superpower and guarantor of freedom and democracy. For our own safety, we've e.g. acted against nuclear proliferation, including convincing Ukraine to give up its nukes for our security assurances. And we wanted Europe fairly weak. Now we're suddenly abdicating our responsibilites in a time of great peril. Good luck handling the power vacuum!
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  412.  @PortlandGuy247  he parrots a lot of establishment talking points because the establishment is right about most things.
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  413.  @MrSkyydude  there are always people who will benefit from authoritarianism and wars, but democracy and the rules-based order that America set up has served us very well. Also see John Rawl's veil of ignorance.
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  414. ​ @marcsyrene3781  so you "non environmentalist are smarter eh?" The real environmentalists are the long-time nuclear proponents, right? That's the litmus test. People who refuse nuclear don't care about the environment, they care about their standing in the environmentalist sect.
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  415.  @marcsyrene3781  come up with what? How energy efficiency from thermal power evens out the difference between ICE and EV, or nuclear power as an environmentalist litmus test? Both are somewhat self-evident if you think about it.
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  416.  @marcsyrene3781  of course system level analysis would be exceedingly complex, but fundamentally it's a gish gallop to argue that all these small items matter a lot. Also, with a true system level analysis, you'd include the EV batteries as well and then it won't look good. Regarding hydro and so forth, yes, of course if the primary energy source isn't thermal, you could argue about what to do. But since electricity has higher energy quality, a standard way to calculate primary energy production is to multiply hydro/wind/... energy with a factor that puts it on even footing with thermal, so that e.g. nuclear power doesn't look three times bigger than hydro when the electrical energy production is the same. We have a system that helps us make priorities and helps us aggregate the effect of various resource drains. It's called "market economy". If costs are higher, then the system requires more of our resources. And I think we should be able to agree that a country currently cannot save money by switching from gasoline/diesel transportation to using the same fuel in powerplants, increased electricity infrastructure and battery-powered transportation. Quite the contrary. So why then assume any energy is saved, when the costs are higher? Yes, battery-powered transportation probably does save money, so the conclusion is that it does so by allowing us to use OTHER primary energy sources, not that it saves us energy. Coal, wind, natgas, nuclear etc are cheaper than oil.
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  417. Germany doesn't do nuclear. Sweden has an innovative lead-cooled concept. Of course France and Russia have designs too, and the UK. But that's kindof it, in Europe.
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  418.  @davocc2405  afaik Siemens built all of the reactors in Western Germany. But Siemens has been withdrawing from nuclear since 2011, just honoring some old obligations and wrapping up things, and I don't think there's much left and I'm very sure that they have no active SMR programme that will compete in the market with NuScale and others.
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  419.  @YAMAHA1 the European grid is pretty integrated nowadays, so it's rather that Germany hurts Europe as a whole when high energy prices bleeds into e.g. Sweden and France, but this integration also reduces the woes in Germany specifically as it's de facto supported by everybody else.
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  420.  @blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311  thanks for the propaganda, Ivan.
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  421.  @blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311  there was no Munich in October 2021, you're thinking February 2022, five days before the invasion, when it was well known that Russia would invade and Zelensky was bitter reflecting back on the Budapest Memorandum, and bitter that Ukraine is refused entry to NATO. But in no way did he say they would aquire nuclear weapons.
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  422.  @blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311  so after concretely amassing forces and assets for a full-scale invasion during 4 months, Ukraine makes a last-minute desperate plea including a very vague statement about nuclear weapons. And Putin, the nuclear sabre-rattler in-chief, "drew the logical conclusions" according to you, and is thus justified in launching the attack? How can you look yourself in the mirror?
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  423.  @blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311  no, Ukraine didn't. Jacques Baud is a Russian propagandist. The cope you relay is a face-saving operation after the embarrassingly failed SMO. The Russians did their very best after years of meticulous preparation and training.
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  424. @blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311  he's a very well known Russian propagandist. It's easy to make completely misleading books with lots of references. Russia's invasion was well planned, or as well planned as they could while they tried to maintain operational secrecy. Obviously the soldiers aren't happy, as it was a huge failure which also means the plans failed.
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  425.  @blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311  he's very much a Russian propagandist, and notorious at that.
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  426.  @blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311  virtually every operation that fails, which the smo did, looks like a planning failure. But the Russians did their very best while trying to maintain operational secrecy.
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  427.  @HubertofLiege  do you know when the 2%-of-GDP goal was introduced? I would guess not. Only in 2014, and it was pretty vague with no threats from the US at that time. The UK exceeds the goal, Poland exceeds it by a lot, France is slightly below, the Baltic countries as well as Finland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia are all exceeding. Norway, Spain, Italy and Canada are well below. With that mixed picture, the US is going to take its guns and go home? With all due respect, this is populist, irresponsible brinkmanship that serves to embolden Putin and thus bring us closer to WW3. Please don't do that. NATO article 5 with its guarantees of mutual defense must be believable or Putin WILL try to break NATO by invading e.g. some country in the Baltics at a time when US leadership is at its weakest and most isolationist. If you don't care, then you either don't understand the implications or you want the world to burn.
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  428. I think there are 1.2 million registered covid deaths in the US, but I don't think more than a third or so could be blamed on antivaxxing, so he's exaggerating.
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  429. We aren't better off with more lies.
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  430.  @SnarkyMikey  they should be regularly shaved?
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  431. EVs can draw power when it's cheap, and their introduction pulls additional capacity online. We don't need to wait.
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  432. OTOH, not sure any defense minister can change corruption patterns much. But I imagine Russia (as well as Ukraine) tightens up and reduce corruption when the stakes increases and results are measurable.
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  433. There are also clearly disinfo campaigns that consciously lie to make our societies weaker, or simply to earn money.
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  434.  @darthnihilus511  if you have to ask, I doubt it's in my power to properly inform you. Search for "False or misleading statements by Donald Trump" and find an article on a collaborative encyclopedia near you. WaPo even has a graph for his presidential period, and in the latter half of his presidency, he averaged 500+ false or misleading statements per month, or close to 20 per day. Now he continues to lie non-stop, e.g. he still falsely claims that the election was stolen.
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  435.  @blablup1214  don't blame Fukushima, it didn't force you to close any nuclear plants. You now have 0 nuclear and 160 TWh coal and gas. In the early 2000s, you had 160 TWh nuclear. You managed to remove nuclear with renewable energy at extreme costs and at negative benefit to the environment. At the same time, a lot of the money was poured into Putin's war chest and gave him the courage to attack Ukraine.
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  436.  @DerajDoh  no examples from me, it's your job to not fall for post truth demagogues.
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  437.  @MarcoCeravolo-g6i  do you know about Lampedusa?
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  438. China right now has 4.5x more people that he US in the 20-64 age group. In 2050, the ratio is projected to be 3.3x. In 2075, 1.9x. In 2100, 1.2x.
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  439.  @chrisrosenkreuz23  demographic inertia is very, very hard to mitigate. Current mothers in China are roughly 10-12 million per cohort year. The next generation of mothers who are now 5-25 year old girls/women are 7-8 million per cohort year. That simply cannot be changed, as those females are already born. And it seems the next generation of females after that will be 5 million per cohort year, which is the case for already born 0-4 year olds.
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  440. ​ @chrisrosenkreuz23  demographic inertia is hard to mitigate. Current mothers in China are roughly 10-12 million per cohort year. The next generation of mothers who are now 5-25 year old are 7-8 million per cohort year. That simply cannot be changed, as those females are already born. And it seems the next generation after that will be 5 million per cohort year, which is the case for already born 0-4 year olds.
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  441.  @chrisrosenkreuz23  it's extremely hard to course correct, and shrinkage is already locked in (the current 0-25 year old females are far fewer than their mothers).
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  442.  @chrisrosenkreuz23  much of the reduction in China is kindof unavoidable since the population pyramid inverted some 40 years ago.
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  443.  @J31  perhaps you could read "The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model" by RAND as a start?
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  444.  @Bayard1503  France has considerable enrichment capacity, so I don't think Europe is at 90%. As Zeihan says, we can easily build enrichment capacity in both the US and Europe, so it's kindof infuriating that we haven't and are slow to do so. We need to ensure strategic self-sufficiency in many areas and this is one of them.
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  445.  @LoganChristianson  all nuclear bombs rely on plutonium or uranium. Hydrogen bombs are staged devices where the first stage is a plutonium fission explosion that then lights up a plutonium spark plug that then starts the hydrogen fusion. Then there's usually a casing of additional uranium that contributes significantly to the yield.
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  446. That's my assumption, at least. The Russians really seem so dysfunctional. Their current assaults on Avdiivka, for instance, are just madness. And at some point, when Russian stores are depleted, it's the production capacity of 140m poor people against that of 1b rich people. But sure, anything could happen. E.g. Trump or China could decide to throw their weight behind Russia.
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  447.  @rosomak8244  Putin thanks you for your distrust.
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  448.  @Alexi7666  it seems the purpose of EVs are to deliver a superior user experience first and foremost. That seems evident from Tesla Roadster and forward. Linear super-strong acceleration response, quiet, vibrationless, odorless and virtually maintenance-free.
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  449. What in this vid was problematic?
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  450.  @williamflack6691  why defend Carlson? He's clearly a post-truth anti-establishment figure, at best using Kremlin propaganda momentum in his own struggles against the establishment and to tear down western institutions.
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  451. Funny, it's like saying "your anti-rapist bias is evident".
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  452. There are always reasons to dismiss facts if you don't like them.
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  453. We seem to need it, yes.
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  454.  @jazznik2  we all know that, but that there's a dystopian story doesn't mean we don't need some institution to combat disinfo.
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  455.  @jazznik2  education seems too slow a fix for the problem we have. For the foreseeable future, I think we need to do whack-a-mole on disinfo campaigns with some kind of government tooling.
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  456.  @84Actionjack  isn't Tulsi Gabbard nowadays a post-truth pundit, politician and possible putinist, endorsed by David Duke, lately taking money from Tucker Carlson? I've heard she said stuff about Harris, but why assume anything Tulsi says is true? For post-truth people like her, lying is like breathing. Tucker, Trump and Tulsi makes a living out of attacking "establishment" and sowing distrust and division. I'll politely decline following-up on post-truth people's claims, but I can follow up if YOU claim something damning and present some evidence that it's true.
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  457.  @84Actionjack  Tulsi has flip-flopped more than Vance himself and is now in bed with both Tucker, Trump and possibly Putin. Why should I listen to her? If you think there is something to say, say it yourself and defend it.
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  458.  @Kim-J312  all serious people are globalists.
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  459.  @jeffevans4196  courts judge people and companies every day based on the courts' determinations of true and false.
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  460. Check Jake Broe.
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  461. The problem is that the elites and neocons are on democracy's side, so if you're on democracy's side, it looks like you're in the same tribe as the elites and neocons. And if you're on the side of the "oppressed" and the dictators and opposed to the elites' and the neocons' geopolitics while living in a democracy, then you're engaging in the luxury of virtue signalling against your own interests.
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  462.  @John-hg3zd  Putin thanks you for jumping onto his distrust bandwagon.
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  463.  @John-hg3zd  were did I say you were pro anything? Read what I write, don't make wild associations.
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  464.  @John-hg3zd  then upgrade your reading comprehension.
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  465.  @crawkn  "Nuclear is the most expensive, and the costs don't improve over time, to date." As a blanket statement, this is quite wrong and ahistorical. But it's certainly true that nuclear has the same up-front cost issue as solar and wind. "New fission technologies may change that picture" No, we don't need new tech for lower costs, we need to both build and deregulate so that supply chains warm up and innovate.
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  466.  @crawkn  did you flee this discussion in general? I expected some kind of comeback from you.
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  467.  @kenhelfer8900  no, EVs use the same amount of energy as ICE vehicles if powered from a thermal energy source such as coal or oil.
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  468.  @peterd9698  please consider that e.g. electrolysis equipment is expensive, and if that is going to be run when there's excess electricity from RE rather than all of the time, then we need say 4x as many electrolysers, and we also need more storage. Same for desalination, we need to make the facilities much bigger.
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  469. Doesn't Muskovich have his own pretty mature EV charging network? Subsidizing/forcing more ordinary chargers would help competitors catch up to that advantage of his.
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  470. Putin is both an idiot and skillful, both very careful and reckless. People are complex. But I don't think he'll launch nukes in any situation, because the chances are extreme that it'd be to his and Russia's detriment.
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  471.  @SignalCorps1  the 500 BUSD added is ok, considering the nominal GDP has risen 3x that. The world generally had to fight the pandemic with money, but now inflation is back under control.
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  472.  @SignalCorps1  with low inflation, interest rates are low. I don't think the federal debt is a significant problem.
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  473.  @AUniqueHandleName444  yes, it's fine now. And when there's a crisis big enough, I prefer that the Fed uses modern monetary theory to having a great depression for a decade.
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  474.  @SignalCorps1  it's not though.
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  475.  @ОлегТурчев-ц4ш  the iraq war was not genocidal because it didn't aim to destroy any religious, ethnic or national group of Iraqis. However Russia's aim is clearly to eradicate Ukrainian identity and it does it by e.g. stealing ukrainian children.
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  476.  @darthkek1953  can you explain why you think so?
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  477.  @annem7806  can't block people on yt.
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  478.  @kaptaan_original  yt censoring sometimes outright removes comments based on trigger words and then those comments don't count toward the total, but sometimes it keeps comments but show them only to the author or some subgroup of people (aka shadowbanning). Wikipedia's entry on shadow banning says: By partly concealing, or making a user's contributions invisible or less prominent to other members of the service, the hope may be that in the absence of reactions to their comments, the problematic or otherwise out-of-favour user will become bored or frustrated and leave the site, and that spammers and trolls will be discouraged[2] to continue their unwanted behavior or create new accounts.
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  479. That was not a major escalation. Just a PR stunt that you can choose to be impressed by or not.
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  480.  @phillystrangler7337  yes, hell of a PR stunt. But nothing more. It has no military significance.
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  481.  @davidanon1568  " they hammer Ukraine accurately on a daily basis and yes almost all the missiles get through" So you're saying that all these apartment buildings were intentionally bombed? It's not that they use wildly inaccurate missiles? Nice. And almost all missiles get through, so all the films we see of Russian missiles being shot down are fake, and the consistent reports that most missiles are shot down are also fake? Thanks Ivan for the info.
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  482. No, because Putin wants to live.
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  483. The breakdown of enrichment capacity is this (2020): 46% Russia 23% Germany-Netherlands-UK 12% France 10% China 8% USA The nuclear electricity generation breakdown looks like this: 34% North America 28% Europe 16% China 12% Asia except China 9% CIS (Russia mainly) So if you match this, you'll see that Europe has more enrichment capacity than needed. China is closing the gap. While North America and Japan/South Korea has too little. So basically Japan and South Korea should collaborate on enrichment, and the US should up its game. Then most of Russia's capacity will be unused as it has 5x more than needed domestically.
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  484.  @LoneWolf-wp9dn  can't sell products with misleading info, but can sell misleading info as a standalone product. Make it make sense.
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  485.  @wisenber  yes, they really are interchangeable. Consider your wording: Theoretically in democracy, the highest of all institution is the people, through whatever representative system you have. So the only "arbiter of truth" should be the people. vs the changed wording: Theoretically in democracy, the highest of all institution is the people, through whatever representative system you have. So the only "enforcer of order" should be the people. There is nothing in the first sentence that says the second sentence should be one or the other.
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  486.  @wisenber  I don't have to support it because everyone knows there's occasionally corruption and abuse of power within law enforcement.
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  487.  @wisenber  "No, they really aren't. One makes a determination. The other physically enforces determinations." They really are. Hikashi didn't talk about that in his argument, and it was his argument that was under scrutiny. You pointing out some kind of category difference is not relevant to what he said, nor does you argument ties things together for him.
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  488.  @SignalCorps1  comparison? I debunked an argument in a valid way. Think about it. You’ll figure it out
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  489.  @wisenber  "How so? You didn't support your premise." I don't have to prove what people already understand.
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  490.  @wisenber  "You actually do. Otherwise, an unsupported premise renders an fallacious conclusion." I've seen so many times people like you trying to make others prove things everybody already knows, and refusing to let it go. Idk if it makes you feel important or if you just want to disrupt threads. Either way, I'm not playing your game. Or at least not that way.
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  491.  @wisenber  if you don't even remember what we're discussing, what's the point? Also, it's spelled sequitur.
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  492.  @wisenber  "I've seen so many people like you trying to pretend your premise doesn't require any evidence." I don't pretend. "Threads without evidence? Sure." Don't ask people to prove water is wet. Make interesting disruptions instead of inane ones. "Providing evidence isn't your game at all." Lying about others is your game though.
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  493. We as in the western world of democracies.
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  494.  @John64314  we're all in the same boat. Western democracies need their military equipment producers.
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  495. So please tell us in a nutshell what you think those studies tell us. My perception is that covid is, in almost all cases, dangerous only on first infection. After that, subsequent infections are just like a cold, possibly a bad cold. And what the vaccines do, effectively, is to do away with the first infection with almost no risk. Is that wrong?
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  496. @jasonneugebauer5310  ah, ok.
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  497. If the place isn't particularly sunny, to the extent solar is cheap, it's only cheap 10% of the time.
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  498. I assume that if the Russians launch a broad nuclear strike, at least some percentage will work, and the west will retailiate even before knowing which. So the dilemma about what to do is only in the case there is a failure to comply in the Russian chain of command and we feel that Putin might reassert control and launch in a few hours.
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  499. @stevebriggs9399  he ran the Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen wars, assassinated an Iranian general and quadrupled drone strikes. And then he mishandled a pandemic, lost the election and launched a coup attempt to stay in power.
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